Mother, The Screws
by The Knight Palamon
Summary: Mother, the screws are coming loose. I'm drowing. What has happened to me. How did I come to be here? Oh that's right...it all started with a plane...He will not come to save me, but he saved me then. (EDIT PLEASE READ its in the authors note so you d
1. The First Screw

**EDIT: **Sorry the original quote is "Mother, the screws are coming undone."

**I apologize for mucking that up.**

**I don't own what it came from and the contest rules still apply (see below for more details) so I can't tell you WHAT I don't own, but I don't own it.**

Hi all. Uhm. I should continue other stories I have going in this section. But I don't like those anymore and this is sort of odd. Uhm. The narrator is in fact insane, so everything you see in _italics _is the voices in her head talking to her. If its confusing do tell me about it in reviews but nine times out of ten my answer will be that its just that she's insane and it will make more sense later. But go ahead and ask and maybe you'll catch a mistake of mine.

I don't own Sherlock Holmes or any of the related characters. I don't own _Master and Margarita _hell I can barely get through it. But I would like to point out its written by Mikhail Bulgakov and if you like Russian History and biblical stuff you'll adore it.

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I often get too emotional about patients in my care. Its why I never became a doctor, I just get too wrapped up in their lives. The girl in 412. I've come to love her as much as I would love a daughter. She came to us half dead and now, a year and a half later she's all better. Well, aside from the coma she's in. No one comes to see her anymore, all the flowers have died, and all the balloons have deflated. So I bring her flowers, and I talk to her. While I bathe her and brush her hair I talk to her. About anything really I just want her to hear a voice. I don't know what she's like but I know she likes mysteries so sometimes I find riddles for her—I know she can hear me, she's got the brain activity to show it—but most of the time all I have for her is gossip. Gossip or the latest news on movies, music and politics; I don't know what else to talk to her about. When I get really desperate I narrate what I am doing, 'I'm brushing your hair. It doesn't look right this short but we can't change it. I'm sorry. I'm brushing your hair, its very pretty. There's so much of it.' Desperate attempts to help her. Give her something to follow home. So far it hasn't worked, but she hasn't gotten worse either so its obviously not hurting her any.

A boy her age used to come every day and read to her. He'd read her Sherlock Holmes stories, and then he ran out. Still he came and he would read books written by others about the detective he told me she hated. I asked why he read the stories to her if she hated the man but he just shrugged and looked down at her in the bed. "Her hair is getting dull. I'll bring her special shampoo for you to use." He told me. None of the people who ever came seemed to agree on what she liked. A girl told him to read the sleeping girl _The Master and Margarita _but it proved too much for him. They could not decipher the language and so returned to speaking or reading Sherlock Holmes. For six months he came. And then even he stopped coming. It was not like the others; first he would only come every few days only for an hour or so, then once a week, then once a month for just an hour. I think he may come still on Christmas—I've been told she loves Christmas—but I don't know for sure. I don't know much about her so I make things up. I decided that her favorite flowers were mums. She looks so innocent it has to be something potted because anything that was slowly withering away would surely depress her. When I can't be there I put on the radio. She had an iPod on her when they brought her in and—wrong though it was—I sifted through the music before her family picked it up. So I always make sure the radio I have in there plays CDs and I put in David Bowie music. She had more CDs of his than I could name. She had one stuffed animal that someone gave, something tied to a box of chocolates, so impersonal. I went out and I bought her a stuffed lion that flopped about and had the softest fur I'd ever felt. His mane is wild about him and falls into his gleaming button eyes. He will protect her and guide her home.

Sometimes I buy her little amounts of body wash for when I clean her. She needs to smell of cooking, of maple and cinnamon and pumpkin. She looks like she should smell of warm, exotic things. I love the maple best on her. It just seems to complete her so well. Its hard to do on my salary but I have a daddy who loves me and spoils me in my attempt to work like a real person. Since no one comes for her anymore but she is being kept alive I feel its my duty as the sole nurse for her to do something. She's going to have a hard time when she wakes up. She's got more than a few scars and her hair—which was long and flowing when she came to us—has been cut around her ears. I don't know what I'll tell her when she wakes up, about her friends and her family. Her hair, once long and red is still the same beautiful color of autumn—matching and contrasting all at once with those spring green eyes. Christmas colors. No wondered she loved the holiday. That I won't have to explain, she'll accept it I know it will. Explaining why her family, why her friends won't come. That will be harder. Maybe she's used to it and won't ask. I don't know which would be better, if it would be better to have her used to it and not disappointed or for her to have had a wonderful life filled with laughter and love only to be disappointed.

On Christmas I stayed late—I'm Jewish anyway—and sat by her, talking through my tears. No one had come for her. I told her that I was sure they were busy working hard for money to keep her alive. I told her when she woke up they would have a place for her still, that they hadn't counted her out just yet. It was more my mantra in a way than something to help her, 'When you wake up it will all be better.' I must have said it a thousand times that night. It was cold and raining outside but in her little room it was warm and bright and we talked and I gave her eggnog. Those in coma's sometimes remember things. They can brush their own teeth or their own hair. This girl could eat on her own and on a good day she would help a little when we stretched her muscles—fighting off atrophy—working with us. Of course she was used to exercise she looked so fit. I had eggnog for her that night and a little bit of cake I'd stolen from the Nurses' down in the pediatric wing. I knew one Christmas Carol from when I had dated a Christian boy and gone to his house for Christmas Dinner. I still remembered it though I didn't know why.

_Silent Night_

_Holy Night_

_All is calm, _

_All is bright..._

* * *

Over the time I had spent in this odd state of not awake and yet not asleep I had come to know I was going mad. Slowly but surely either why I was going mad. At first Alan had come to visit every day. He would talk to me and read to me and it gave me something to focus on, gave me something to anchor myself to the real world, the world I knew I should be a part of. I knew he came every day and it let me know how much time was passing. Then he started coming less and less and the less he came the more I lost myself. I dropped into a world behind what I could see with my eyes—though I couldn't interact with that world—and into something dark and plain. I wished I was back in _his _study and I began to picture it. Just to see if I could. As I began remembering it became...well it became _So_. The walls formed around me with their wallpaper. Deep red with little flowering things on them that I had no name for, I knew that they had been a flower I couldn't name before but now it was a combination of a daisy and a rose. I knew that wasn't right but because I saw it in my mind it was so. There was a prevalent smell of chemicals, I couldn't name that burned my nose slightly. I saw the couch that I used to lounge on and instead of having those arms that used to kink my neck it had huge, overstuffed arms and it didn't have any of the stains it had carried in the life I knew. I saw books on the shelves and I looked over the covers and saw books I knew. I knew he'd never even heard of _The Princess Bride _but there was the book there on the shelf and I took it down. I looked to the door that currently opened onto darkness. I dedicated what I had of this room to my memory as best I could and was drawn our by his return. When I dropped back into this world after a few days of no signs of Alan I found the room as I had left it, though the wallpaper was peeling a little. I looked through the door and envisioned a hall—I wanted a bath—to a bathroom I had always wanted and never gotten.

_Wait..._

Why did I need a bathroom? I was all in my head. I shook my 'head' and laughed at myself in a nervous sort of way. I was drifting I could feel it. I was drifting away from reality, away from the world I knew. I took a book off of the shelf and wondered how I remembered all the words within these books.

_Maybe you don't._

I shivered despite the warm fire—

_There is no fire this is all in your head_

--and prayed that things wouldn't get any weirder than they were currently getting. I still needed that shower though—

_Mother, the screws are coming loose_

--so I walked to the door of the room and pushed my hands against the worn wood. For a moment I stood and breathed in the chemical scent that always hung about this room—the scent that I had, after a time, grown to love—and I thought. I envisioned a long hall, stretching into the beyond with pale marble and green walls and more doors, doors just like this one. I pushed open the door and found my hallway, or had it always been there? And I walked to the first door on my left, pushing it open with a simple motion. There was nothing.

Oh right...I'm in my head.

I faded back into reality, it was like I was submerged in water and I was trying to swim to the surface but it felt as though my legs were weighted and over the next few months it got harder and harder for me to make this trip so I made it less and less often. The nurse tried to speak to me but her voice was hard to concentrate on and I always ended up slipping back into this strange world where inner voices spoke to me like different people.

The next morning when I work to the sun shinning through my windows I stretched and yawned, climbing out of my four-poster bed and stretching again, just to be sure I got all the kinks out, and then I walked to the bathroom, taking a long bath in water that was the perfect temperature. All the candles that were scattered about this room flared up at once and Autumn from Vivaldi's _Four Seasons _began playing. The whole room smelled of flowers and spices and the bubbles in the bathtub were huge and some chose to float lazily around the room, occasionally landing on something and shimmering for a moment like an opal before they lifted back into the air.

I read a book as I lounged, _How to tell when you're insane_, and there was a quiz first off. "Do you hear voices?"

_You're not reading _anything

'Yup.' I thought to myself. "Do they repeat any specific phrase?"

_Mother, the screws are coming loose._

'Uh-huh. Check.' There was a space for an essay, "How did you come to own such a lovely bathroom?"

_You don't, you're in your head._

'I made it.'

_No you didn't. Don't you remember? _Him, _him and his science, his smooth voice and those stormy eyes. I know you remember his eyes._

'That's right...' I did remember his eyes. For a moment I stood in the center of an ocean during a storm, looking down at the water that would match the sky but for the slight twists of green that snaked through it. I stared at the paper for a moment and the line 'I made it' vanished as I began to tell my story.

_Mother the screws...Don't forget the screws..._

Yes, telling my story would put the screws back into their proper places, _do _stop interrupting. Its very rude you know.

_My apologies._

No harm done. Now...how I came here...how did I come here...will you start me off please?

_You were in Australia. Start from when you were leaving the plane. _

That's right...I was flying to Australia with my orchestra and my harp.

_That's right._

The memories, as they started flooding towards me turned the water cold and the mirror cracked. My chest burned with the pain of my shattered harp.

_Your heart. It was your heart that was broken._

My...my heart?

_Yes, keep telling the story. Remember._

My harp was in the bowels of the plane, I wasn't attached to it like some people got attached to their instruments, though I did love it. I was surprised they were letting me come, that they had let me into the orchestra at all because...well I'm odd looking. Though I hadn't lost use of my eye so I did still have my depth perception, but I should be pretty, like everyone else. I'd been an idiot and fought back when someone tried to mug me and he—the guy mugging me—had swung at me with a knife, straight down from the top of my head to my shoulder. I'd protected my eye by throwing up a hand but I had a scar trailing about an inch on my forehead and then curving a bit like a backwards "J" on my cheek below my eye. If I put my arm up you saw it continue in a line along my arm. Matching up like a puzzle. They didn't mind but I was certainly embarrassed by it. Still though, they had wanted me to come along on this trip so I had. I couldn't let them down...

So I had come, even though I didn't really fit in, at least I didn't think so. I felt like a pigeon in a group of peacocks, a cow in a field of Unicorns...anything but I didn't belong. They said I did belong, but that was because they loved music and they saw beyond the scar and the temper that I did have and they just heard the music. Of course I was good at music it was the only thing I'd ever love that hadn't hurt me in the end, and never would hurt me. I knew it wouldn't, it may leave me but I would not mourn its loss because even if I could no longer _make _music I could always listen to it. It would always be there on the sidelines even if it no longer stood beside me. We gathered in front of the airport and most of us loaded onto the bus while some who wanted to travel _with _their instruments tended to take cabs. The rest of us piled onto the bus and headed in this fashion to the hotel that was putting us up. I sat next to one of the flautists and we talked of shopping in this area. We both seemed to agree on the fact that music was such an integral part of our souls that we did not need to speak of it all the time, for it was always there, somewhere, within us.

I always hated going out since people stared. They stared or they didn't stare. And I mean they were so obviously not staring it was just as bad as if they stared. Some people ignored it well enough but I still wondered in my head if they were thinking, "I don't want to stare, the poor dear has probably been through enough." Because that was pity and I didn't _want _pity. I just wanted to be a normal person. She talked about how she wanted to take me snorkeling and joked that we'd look like fish with the big goggles on. "The fish will think we're tourist fish from some distant sea." She announced, always being slightly airy and flighty like that, lost constantly in her dreams which was a good thing for a flautist because their music was always sort of dreaming and light. Over my years traveling with them I realized you could tell a lot about a person by the instrument they played. The drummer was loud and to the point, sometimes with a bit of grace but not likely.

It was little things like that but I liked seeing how much people were like their instruments, like people that looked and acted like their pets.

_Terrible Analogy._

Shut up.

We pulled up to the hotel and I got off the bus. They would deliver my harp to my room seeing as I didn't think that any _one _person could lift the thing. I loved it, no I really did, but I didn't enjoy how heavy it was. I walked to my room—well not the _whole _way since there _were _elevators—and plopped onto the bed, flicking on the television I watched cartoons into the night and I watched a few movies that I had to buy from the hotel for an obscene price. It was worth it to calm myself and let myself float in the nothingness that came when someone else was doing the work to keep you entertained. The next morning I would wake early and go for a run. So when the sun rose and spilled through my windows, forcing me out of my warm, deep sleep, I stood and stretched while I plotted—I don't plan, that's too kind, I plot—what to wear.

_Your sweater and shorts._

And sandals. I loved those sandals no matter that I wasn't meant to run in them. My sweater was so large you could barely tell I had shorts on beneath it. Occasionally it lifted enough that you could see the frayed denim but for the most part it looked as though I wore a gray hoodie that was advertising the Zodiac Killer for no reason other than I was an odd, odd child. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail—much too lazy and unskilled to do anything more to it and I headed down and out into the open air. It was hot and disgusting out, I liked the weather where I was from, not this hot, dry weather that made my lips chap. I ran anyway, because running made me feel better. I didn't think, I just ran and nothing bothered me. I didn't think too much, I didn't try to understand things, I didn't do anything that drew my mind onto topics that I wished to ignore. While I ran I listened to my iPod. A beautiful invention if I had ever seen one. I listened to music I had no way of playing, I listened to Jazz, to Funk, to Rock and to Pop. I listened to the music I did not have the skill to play on my harp for I had my friends and companions to listen to if I wanted classical. I suppose that was an odd way of looking at things but...again...I am an odd human being.

_The screws._

My mother used to say that they didn't screw my brain in properly and I was weird because of that. I knew she didn't mean it to hurt and it didn't, in fact, hurt me. I did believe it however.

_You are digressing._

Right. Sorry. I ran because I wanted some moments free from the nagging thoughts that constantly plagued me and I would stop and take a cab back when my legs refused to move any longer. I was actually stopped before that happened when my iPod skipped and then with a sickening click it shut off. I stopped and looked down at it, my fingers working furiously to get it playing once more. I think—though it happened so long ago my memories are slightly vague at this particular junction—that I first noticed that despite how unbearably hot it had been earlier I was now very cold and it was raining lightly. Then, for absolutely no reason at all, my eyes shifted from the dark screen of my iPod and I noticed I was standing on a cobblestone street. Very slowly I tilted my head up and through my bangs I began to examine what was supposed to be the boardwalk near my hotel. I was standing on a cobblestone street on what I was sure was Regents park. Only the last time I had been here there had been the occasionally wrapper from a Big Mac and Miller bottle cap. I very slowly twisted and saw people milling about, shooting glances at me and my strange clothing. Well, strange compared to what they were wearing. Dresses that I had only seen at costume shops, horses---well those weren't so weird—and gas lamps. Things from a world that I had only seen in movies.

I am not a strong person in times of crisis. I can be, after I have had time to have a fit of sorts. So when I felt compelled to act as follows please understand this does not dictate how I planned to react for the rest of this adventure.

_Who are you talking to?_

I dropped into a sitting position and started crying, trying to stifle myself from sobbing and managing that but failing at not crying. I pulled my legs up underneath the sweater and I continued crying, much to the confusion of those around me. I didn't care because at that moment all I wanted, was to keep crying forever.

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cookies and a cameo character appearance if they want it for anyone who can tell me where "Mother the screws are coming loose" and all variations thereof is from. 


	2. The Second Screw

don't own Sherlock holmes and he will show up eventually.

Yay to Vidar who won, it was indeed from "I feel Sick" by JV

* * *

I cried until there was nothing wet left within me, until my throat was raw and my back was hurting from the awkward position I found myself to be in, and even then I continued to whimper and mewl as I tried to come to grips with whatever was going on around me. I finally succumbed to exhaustion and feel into a fitful sleep assuring myself that if I was dreaming all this, then going to sleep would, of course, wake me up. Surely I had been running and been hit by a car or somehow or another hurt myself. And now I was in a coma and in the hospital, so if I could just wake up everything would be fine, I could go back to the hotel and I could eat Doritos and drink soda and I could be me and wait with bated breath until the performance tonight. I was too tired to even dream as I lay in the cold air of what couldn't be Australia and the soft misting rain that continued to fall. I don't know how long I slept for but I do know that when I woke the sky was on fire with the colors of the sunset.

I stood and my joints ached with the cold and the awkward position I had slept in for so long a time. I stood, feeling calmer, and was ready to face what was now a certainty. I was no longer in Australia and as long as I had come across oceans and continents I was pretty sure I was no longer in my time either. I wished for you to comfort me.

_I was not a part of you then. I came after, after medication and pain and illness..._

Right. Right...how did I forget, I used to be sane.

_You still are sane, you're just on your way to insanity._

I stood in the center of a park with my oversized sweater and my tiny cut-off jeans and sandals and I wondered what I should do, because now the terror was out of my system. A strange calm had taken over because I was too tired and drained—at least emotionally—to feel anything else, and that was why I had let myself breakdown. Because in breaking down I was now able to handle whatever was happening to me. I took two steps toward the road that was circling the park and then paused. No, first I had to decide what to do about all this.

_Ah how nice it was when your head was filled with coherent thoughts._

I walked to a bench and dropped down onto it. My whole being was damp, down to my bones. So sitting in the puddle that was collected on the bench didn't bother me as much as it would have normally. First thing was first, because back then—the voices were right—I thought coherently and I was methodical even in the way I thought through things. I decided that first I should find out the date, and test if my theory was correct or if I just hadn't been to London in a really long time. So where could one find the date, without asking anyone that would worry about my mental health if I requested the year? Banks, but if my time theory was right then a bank would not have a digital clock for me to look at. Then I had the thought that perhaps I could find a newsstand of some sort. If I could find the newspaper it would tell me the date and the year—sometimes—and if it didn't say the year well though my knowledge of history wasn't the best I could get a general sense of what the year was. WWII was around the 1940's because I knew Hitler died in '45 and the rest of my knowledge was similarly pathetic. But it would be better to have a general sense than no sense at all.

_Completely senseless indeed._

So with a renewed sense of purpose I stood and began walking. I never considered the fact that I was possibly walking around in a time before cut-off shorts were appropriate and within moments I was reminded of this possibility when people were staring at me and I was feeling utterly self-conscious as I tugged down on the hem of my sweater. I wished that I had at least worn sweatpants, because then people wouldn't be _staring _so much at my legs. If that was happening on a normal day I would be happy, because it would be like an ego boost that all these men and women even were staring at my legs, not some supermodel but _my _legs. Now it was just embarrassing and I was starting to wonder when prostitution became illegal; worried mostly that I was going to get arrested before I could figure out what to do about my current situation.

I wasn't arrested but being arrested, no matter the time period, would have been better than what did happen. In my childhood I tended to get into trouble and I tended to go off with friends. My mother, mostly for her own peace of mind, requested that I learn at least a few basic self-defense moves. I took about a year of karate, got angry with the way they taught me and spend the rest of my life keeping myself strong and fast—when I wasn't playing the harp—and I taught myself by watching one too many "Bruce Lee"-esque movies. She often commented when I came home with a new injury that she had created a monster. It was always in jest so I thought it just as hilarious at the time. Sometimes people looked at me funny, "oh there is the girl who beat up so-and-so." But the whispers were drowned out by my music, which took over most other aspects of my life. The more certain things bothered me, the more time I dedicated to learning everything about this instrument. I was given a scholarship to a wonderful music school and from there I was accepted into an orchestra that I loved. We toured around the world and they became like my family. I loved them all desperately and we clung to each other in times of need.

So as I wondered I found myself in the crowed, dirty streets of a less then reputable neighborhood, a place were real prostitutes wondered the streets. And it was here that I was approached by a man whose breath reeked of cheap liquor. Thanks to my father I was born with the ability to tend bar. I guessed that it was whiskey or Bourbon and from the way his whole person stank of it I assumed he was beyond smashed. My roommate in college had been violent when she wasn't drunk, which wasn't often, so with that practiced ease I made my voice sound like honey and I tried to calm him down, shushing him gently when he stuck a meat-y fist at me, offering me a sixpence for a roll in an alley. I pushed lightly against his hand telling him that I was not a whore and he swung at me. The alcohol made him stupid and slow so there was no trouble in dodging his swing but he started yelling, attracting more attention than I had the capacity to deal with and so I did the only thing that seemed even half-way intelligent. I ran. I ran, I tripped, and I fell, cracking my head against the hard stones that served as the road. I may have actually knocked myself unconscious but as far as I knew I only stunned myself. For several moments I lay there, stunned, staring up into the sky which was obscured mostly by the buildings that rose up on either side of me. All I could really see was a small strip of blue sky with patches of gray clouds hanging low.

Thought not entirely sure of how long I lay there I did know that it was longer than a few hours because I saw the orange light of sunset fade into purple and then the gas lamps were lit out on the street. I wasn't sure if I should move, knowing next to nothing about head-wounds, but I thought that if I just lay here until I wasn't dizzy anymore than surely I would be safe. It was just for safety's sake, not that I was lazy or anything. Well, safety and I was sure that should I move the entire contents of my stomach would come forth in a violent display. Bad because I hate vomiting and bad because I didn't know when my next meal would be available to me. Finally, somewhere to my left, I heard a door open with a slight creak. I heard someone saying their goodbyes to whatever rested on the other side of the door and then the person turned into the alley and by the startled sound the person—I had yet to know if the person was male or female—had seen me. A hand touched my shoulder and a face came into my narrow view. The light from the gas lamps threw odd shadows over the man's face. I wouldn't have been able to guess in the dim light but his hair was short and woman in this time just _didn't _have short hair so I assumed it had to be a man

"Are you alright?" The man asked. I tried to nod and found that I couldn't so I just uttered a weak 'yes' and tried to form a smile though my lips were more than unwilling. Other than a prevailing need to vomit _Exorcist _style and a soft throbbing in my head I really was feeling fine. Considering how I could feel sometimes and still function I labeled my current state as fine and so it was not a lie to say that I was alright. The man's hand slid under my neck and his fingers felt along the bones, then moving to the back of my head—lifting it slightly—looking around for anything that would leave me in a position not to be moved. I didn't know what time I was in but I was sure that even in my time not everyone was in a position to know about what to check to see if someone who's had a fall can be safely moved or not. I knew there was something to look for but I certainly didn't know how to tell. I was impressed and automatically assumed that he was someone who had—for one reason or another—received medical training. He seemed pleased with whatever he had found and he looped his arms under my shoulders, struggling to find the best way to get me to my unsteady feet. Working together we got me to my feet and once there he began to half-carry and half let me walk on my own back into the building he had just exited. I learned that the building he had come out of was in fact the police station. This made me wonder if maybe he was a police officer, in which case I was impressed at how lucky I was to have stumbled across him.

There was much fussing as I was brought in—which for the most part I could understand—and so many things were happening that my poor, befuddled mind could not entirely grasp what was being done. The man who had found me was wearing a black coat that reached to the ground so that it swished about his ankles and had it not been made more like an Inverness cloak I would have thought it to be a trench coat from my time. It looked like the cape that my brother wore when he dressed up like Basil of Baker Street.

_Trivial things do not matter. Get the story out. Remember._

He had removed his hat—a black bowler—and I could better see his hair. It was the color of the moon as was his skin, his eyes were the color of the ocean and these were hidden partially behind little half-moon glasses. Despite the fact that the glasses looked a bit out of place on the whole tough cop look he looked young, well collected and I was impressed by the very sensible side he seemed to have. I was wrapped in a man's jacket before I realized it and someone was shoving a steaming mug of soup—or stew?—into my hands. It was a soft yellow color with bits of meat and vegetables floating around in it and I inhaled it gratefully, unable to recall the last time I had eaten. The man who had found me was now sitting in a chair across from me while the activity behind me dulled to a soft roar and then to a meager buzzing noise that grated on my nerves. Nerves which were frayed enough as it was.

"Do you know your name?" He asked. His voice was kind, but there was a hint of power in there. I nodded and went back to my soup. It took me several moments but on my own I managed to realize that he had meant for me to tell him my name if I could. Thankfully I could blame that idiocy on my recent—or was it recent?—head injury. My voice was craggy from disuse and the sob-fest I had allowed myself earlier but I thought I did a rather good job of scraping out my name. "Brandy eh?" He murmured, nodding at me in a way that made me feel like he was filing everything he learned about away and into the back of his head somewhere. "Well Miss Brandy I am Simon Glass, and if I may point out...your choice of dress is rather odd, as was the situation you were found under." His voice was calm and he seemed bright and nice, so I was probably more inclined to answer his questions than anyone else around here. The only problem was I didn't know how to answer him. He wanted to know my story, but even I didn't know what my story was.

_Liar. You knew what to say but you knew it was not intelligent to say._

Right. I am a liar.

I'm a liar.

"I don't know. It's blurry, I can't remember much. There are faces I see in my head and I remember things about me, and I remember what I learned—"I caught myself before I said school and replaced that and explained that I remembered much of what I had learned from tutors. He nodded and I set the empty mug aside, resisting the urge to pull my legs to my chest and curl around myself like I used to do when I was a scared, small child; like I used to do when I wanted to hide from the monsters under my bed.

"You remember how you got that scar?" He pointed at my face—was that utterly necessary?—and I nodded, though I chose not to regale him with the story, or a warped version of it. He nodded and his blue-green eyes were hooded so I couldn't read them, not that I was any good at reading people on a normal basis. He stood and smiled at me as a larger man came towards me looking like he had stepped out of a Basil Rathbone flick. I didn't watch those often, I liked Humphrey Bogart if I was going to watch movies that were that old, but I knew what the actor looked like and I knew he was utterly famous for his job at being Sherlock Holmes. I supposed it was a bad analogy since I didn't really know much about him but I was always one to over-describe things.

_You like run-on sentences, you're obsessed with them. _

And you're obsessed with interrupting me, what's your point?

_I don't suppose I have one. Do you?_

I watched the younger man walk away and the new man caught my attention once more. He introduced himself as Inspector Lestrade and I wondered for a moment why that name was so familiar to me. My ponderings were interrupted when he began asking me questions and so I answered as best I could. As best I could when I was pretending to be an amnesiac at least. After almost an hour of his questions another young man rushed to his side and whispered something in his ear. Something that certainly didn't seem to make the Inspector very happy by the red that exploded over his cheeks and the spluttering sound that escaped his lips. He excused himself and vanished, leaving me sitting at the small desk with someone's coat wrapped around me and an itchy blanket that had been tucked around my legs at some point. Things really were beginning to get hazy for me.

_No dear, its just been a long time since that day. Your memory is a fine thing when it comes to useless trivia, other things...you have trouble with. _

The ma—Simon Glass grinned in a comforting sort of way as he walked past the door and he was followed by a tall man. Lestrade was walking after them and muttering something to the tall man. A lady came in; she was much more of a grandmother type, short, plump and everything. She presented me with clothes they had on hand—considering the time I wasn't sure I wanted to know how a police station came to have women's clothing. The skirt was too long by several inches and pooled about my feet, it was threadbare and stained and it was warm so I didn't care. It had, in its better days, been a rather pretty rust color but now it was sort of a dirty brown with tints of red. The waist buttoned and the shirt they presented me with did too, as did the jacket that covered it. The shirt was white with blue pinstripes and the sleeves were too short and the bust was too big. I didn't mind it too much though I would later realize I had a great deal of trouble keeping it tucked into the skirt. There were some stains around the cuffs but other than that and a little discoloration due to age it was rather nice. The coat was the only thing that fit nicely, though the sleeves were a little long but only to a point that I enjoyed; just enough to cover up to my fingers. It had the same lines as trench coats made for women in my time, swooping in to hug my waist, and the back buttoned to make a sort of gather making the whole thing look like a longer blazer of my time. There were five buttons down the front of this and it was a well kept green. I assumed the stains didn't show on the dark fabric for if you ran your fingers over you could feel the little hard bits of god only knows what.

After the lady—"Call me Molly dearie, everyone does"—helped me get everything buttoned and such my fingers were raw and soar and I was ready for "Velcro" to hurry up and be invented. Molly decided that we had to do something with my hair. It had previously been falling in my face. After my bout with my own idiocy had left me scarred I had grown my hair into one long mass, mass being it had no bangs and was all the same length, and usually let it fall into my face. She pushed part of it out of her way and her eyes flickered to the scar, staring for a moment but her smile didn't even waver for a moment, she tut-tuted and ran her slightly chubby fingers through my hair as she tried to decide what to do with it. I was grateful that my experiment with purple had long since faded out. "Such a pretty color. Like the corn we used to go back home." She told me as she tried different things using her hands in place of pins. She nodded and then sighed heavily. "Those silly men, well for now I'll just have to make do but you can get a pretty ribbon for your hair later." She started pulling and tugging at my hair as she did something I couldn't see to it, though I could only guess she was trying to tame it into a braid. No easy task when my hair was only a little past my shoulders.

They didn't have shoes for me so I was left with my flip-flops since no one could see them anyway. That just meant that my feet would be cold and I'd die of exposure before anything else.

_Drama Queen_

I don't know what I expected them to do about me; I don't think I even bothered to expect them to do anything. However when they told me I could go home, well that startled me. Not just because I had no home but because I had forgotten that even in our country at this time police weren't as careful about the people they protected.

Anyway, that's how I found myself wondering around London after dark, in clothes that weren't meant for me, and no idea of what was going on.

_And all alone._

I miss when I was alone with my thoughts.

_I'm injured._

I wish you were dead.

_Then you would be dead too you know._

I know.

I had slept enough so I wondered around, trying to stick to well-lit places and looking for the London Bridge. It was something that I knew; it was a constant, a perfect thing that existed in the world that I knew. Of course, a thing that big and I had managed to loose it. I told you all at the start of this that I used to be sane...maybe I lied? I did find it eventually and I found a dark corner all for myself and curled up there as the rain started to fall again, chilling me to the bones and soaking my clothes through. I contemplated throwing myself off the bridge in hopes that in "dying" I would regain my real body back in Australia where I was supposed to be with all my friends.

Where I was supposed to be with my harp, and if I was lucky I would wake up from whatever nightmare this was.

_Suicidal thoughts. A sure sign of sanity. _

I decided against it. There was a lone thought, buried in the back of my mind, that maybe, just maybe...maybe this was all real, maybe I was really in London of another time and maybe I _wasn't _dreaming. So I sat curled in a ball, waiting for sun-up and an idea of what I was meant to do. I had managed to find a few coins while I walked, little bits of change that people had dropped as they walked, and I didn't know how much it added up to but it was better than having no money at all and when it was light I could try and figure out what they were. I wasn't crying anymore and I wasn't drifting in and out of consciousness so I figured that poor, alone, cold, wet, hungry and lost was better than on the verge of death and or an emotional breakdown. My hands trembled—well my whole body was trembling—and my teeth were chattering. I was a little scared at the people that walked past me and stared, stared as though I had a second head sitting on my shoulder. I was sure I would freeze to death if I fell asleep, but when I was little and for as long as I could remember I always slept if I was too cold. That being, once more I feel asleep, fitful and out of boredom and I was sure that I would be dead before I woke up.

Oh how wrong I was...


End file.
